Style School, Volume 1 Book

Style School Vol.1 was the first art-related/art instructional book I've bought. It held a lot of promise when I first saw it on the bookshelf in Kinokuniya. And books in Kinokuniya are definitely more expensive books are expensive in my country. Fucking expensive I say. And so I told myself it had better be worth it.

I should have requested the plastic opened to take a good look on the inside but there was only one copy left (physically) so I had to take it. And I got it for 50-odd bucks.

50% of this book disappointed me. I was expecting more tutorials and in-depth analysis on manga illustration.
The 'instructions' given as said in title, is brief and limited. We get tutorials from various artists who uses a variety of mediums like photoshop, markers, colored inks, acrylics, a 3D software and watercolor. The 3d software used by the artist Imperial Boy is Lightwave 3D and for those who has never used Lightwave would have to find another alternative to create 3d parts for your illustration. Blender? Maya? :)
By limited, I would mean that you can't get much out of this book regarding softwares because this book, isn't an art software/art tutorial book. When I first got this book, I had absolutely no experience with photoshop nor did I have the software to experiment so whatever photoshop lingo the artist used was a blank to me. What was a 'multiply'? What the hell is a 'Lock Transparent Pixels'? At the time I was using Copic markers, and I thought, finally, an extremely useful tutorial for me!
The content which I found most helpful was the material commentary by Fumika, she gives a brief explanation and differentiates the materials and their outcome. And the page on pen-testing, they've illustrated and example; how a pigma pen is different from the brush pen. You get to see very cute doodles from Fumika and Sukemaru Ichita.

After that, we get 10+ pages of artwork. Style School serves more as a gallery for artists and showcases artworks sent from people around the world. We get a few illustrative double page-spreads, not that there's anything wrong with that- the artwork is lovely but then I was hoping for more step-by-step material. Then we have the monochrome illustration collection, this 'gallery' is all greyscale/ black &white artwork.


What I found to be the highlight was the manga screentoning tutorial by Touya Senri, how he manually applies the screentone, the inking and the cutting. I was very impressed. Manga artists sure work hard.

Style School Vol.1 isn't as informative and useful as I thought it to be, albeit the bits about pens and getting a glimpse on how certain artists execute their artistic skills. It has plenty of very cute art. Sure, but not really what I was looking for.